So, pretty much every main tank uses Defiance. And I can see why, it gives the highest damage resistance and a boatload of free energy. Is there an argument to me made for the other passives? I can see them being useful for soloing and off-tanking, but is there a reason to use them as front-line tank?
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Invulnerability works okay; it's actually not that far behind on mitigation, and the flat reduction makes it far more durable against, well, everything that's not main-tanking a cosmic.
Regen is highly vulnerable to being one-shot - you need to be skilled enough to block everything if you want to main-tank with it. Doable in a high con juggernaut/wardicator build, and it does shine in stuff like TA - very few other tanks can survive having their healer go down, but a regen tank can turtle behind block and last for quite a while.
Lightning Reflexes is... problematic at best. You can build it the same way you would a regen tank, using LR to reduce on-average incoming damage - but then it has the same flaw of needing to block everything or risk getting one-shot.
Or you can go for a 100% dodge chance build, which is finicky to play, requires extreme gearing before it even starts to work, risks getting one-shot if anything goes even slightly wrong... and has the highest overall mitigation of any defensive passive.
I do not recommend trying to make a tank using LR - but if you decide to ignore that, I can offer advice on how I got mine to mostly work.
Personal Force Field is... well, it's like Regen but weaker. Can probably be used if you get enough survivability from other sources, but in any long-lasting fight it's only marginally better than trying to tank with no passive at all. Do not recommend.
Defiance and Invuln are easier to build around and manage, though.
Only main drawback to Defiance, aside from not handling small-medium hits as well as Invuln, is that you need to guarantee aggro to get hit constantly. Not usually an issue for a tank w/ Challenge advs, but could be if a high-dps tank is competing w/ you and you can't maintain aggro vs. them.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Sounds like we're saying the same thing about LR without 100% dodge, though; it's technically workable, but you have to design your character as if you had no passive at all. (This is actually an unavoidable flaw in cosmics as open world content. From the point of view of the encounter designer, you have to assume that players will bring as many healers as they need - which means you can't threaten a tank with anything short of instant death, since anything else will just get healed through. Which, in turn, devalues tanking passives that are built around strong on-average mitigation, or self-healing, or in fact anything other than just raw worst-case single-hit survival.)
Anyways, I don't advocate for 100% dodge builds, and never really have been a proponent of them, given how strict they are. My LR tanks still come w/ decent defense and high maxHP as backup, and don't lose much if they have to take <12 sec out to do something else (window of TKick's buff).
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
My main tank is Defiance. I tried Invulnerability on a recent tank build and quickly retconned out of it. I could tell a significant difference in survivability.
That being said, Invulnerability is a good choice for leveling. A lot of stuff in lower levels is ping-ping-ping, so the flat mitigation is nice. Plus, being able to rank it straight up makes for easier play than building Defiance stacks at lower levels. But, once you get to 40, retcon out of Invulnerability and into Defiance.
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Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
Invul: Superior for tanking mobs, can work vs bosses however things will hurt a fair bit more, and energy will be annoying....failiure to block REALLY hurts a lot.. possibly 1-shotting you
Regen: Good for tanking all kinds of things.....however has massive potential to get you 1-shot by cosmics and the like if you miss a block
LR: Good for tanking all kings of things, slight edge vs mob when combined with BCR+adv, however cosmics have dodge debuffers which basically render LR like regen.. block or risk insta death
PFF: Less of a defensive passive and more of a "defend your passive" has...issues, not the least of which is getting 1-shot broken though block by a number of bosses...
Member of Paragon Dawn: Because some people like friendly helpful communities.
Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!